Environ. Sci. Technol. 2009, 43, 5555–5557
La Oroya’s Legacy of Lead BARBARA FRASER
BARBARA FRASER
In a town in the Peruvian Andes, a smelter provides muchneeded jobs, but the long-term toll on children’s health worries activists and some residents.
Even if all the pollution controls are successful, however, no one knows how much long-term damage has been done to La Oroya’s children, who are caught in a battle that has repeatedly been cast as a choice between jobs and a healthy environment. The children most affected live in La Oroya Antigua, a neighborhood clinging to a hillside directly opposite the smelter, where residents climb steep staircases to reach homes that lack running water or sewer hookups and may house three or four families. “This is a technical problem, but above all, it is an ethical and moral issue,” says Catholic Archbishop Pedro Barreto Jimeno of Huancayo, whose jurisdiction includes La Oroya and who spearheaded a coalition of community organizations to study environmental problems in the area.
Long history of lead exposure
A small group of mothers clustered on a street corner in this grimy industrial town on a recent afternoon, reciting their children’s blood lead levels the way most parents talk about school grades. Rosario Ccanto Taipe’s younger daughter, Angely, had a level of 52.88 µg/dL when she was tested in July 2008. Her older daughter, eight-year-old Estefany, skipped last year’s test but had a level of nearly 50 µg/dL three years ago. Ccanto fears that lead exposure has impaired Estefany’s memory. “She studies, but she doesn’t retain what she learns,” Ccanto says. The women blame the smelter across the river from their neighborhood for exposing their children to lead. The smelter’s main stack towers over this narrow Andean valley more than two miles above sea level, where the rocky hills are white and bare from decades of acid rain. Since a 2004 Health Ministry study found that 99.7% of the children in the neighborhood nearest the smelter had dangerously high levels of lead in their blood, environmentalists, health researchers, and the local Catholic archbishop have called for tighter controls at the complex, which is owned by Doe Run Peru, a subsidiary of the U.S.-based Renco Group, Inc. Company executives and government officials say that the problem is slowly coming under control and that it is unfair to blame Doe Run for all of La Oroya’s pollution. The smelter, which processes copper, zinc, and lead, has been spewing metal dust and sulfur dioxide over the valley since 1922, they say, but Doe Run has only operated it for a dozen years. 10.1021/es901734g
2009 American Chemical Society
Published on Web 07/01/2009
Doe Run made headlines in Peru in March 2009, when it sought a bailout after lenders cut off the credit it used to buy ore from suppliers. Several mining companies agreed to pitch in for a financial rescue plan, but government officials hinted that the company might not be able to meet this year’s deadline for compliance with its environmental management plan. The plan took effect in 1997 when Doe Run bought the smelter from the state-owned mining company Centromin. The arrangement gave the company 10 years to upgrade the plant, cut emissions from the main stack, encapsulate buildings to reduce fugitive emissions, clean up effluents, and build three plants to capture sulfur and convert it to sulfuric acid. The most expensive part, building the sulfur-capture plants, was left until the end. In 2006, with the deadline approaching and the plants not started, Doe Run won a twoyear extension to complete them. The extended deadline expires October 31, 2009, but the Minister of Energy and Mines Pedro Sa´nchez says it could be reviewed, because the smelter was shut down for more than a month while the company tried to solve its financial problems. The smelter ran at partial capacity in May, then suspended operations again on June 3, 2009. Barreto opposes any deadline change. Arguing that the company “lacks the moral authority to request such an extension,” the archbishop says, “Not one more day. It would be a national disgrace.” The archbishop, who says he once received a death threat for speaking out about pollution in the valley, is especially concerned about the health of children and pregnant women. In 2005, he arranged for the St. Louis University School of Public Health to study smelter-related health problems. Fernando Serrano, who headed the research team, says he was “scandalized” to find children with blood lead levels higher than those of U.S. workers who are exposed by handling the metal. He was also taken aback by the reception in La Oroya: hecklers pelted the researchers with eggs and handed out leaflets accusing them of being “vampires”. VOL. 43, NO. 15, 2009 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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La Oroya started its life as a company town and grew up around the smelter, which was built by the U.S.-based Cerro de Pasco Copper Corp. and later nationalized and operated by the state-owned company Centromin.
Even if the smelter eventually meets air-quality standards, experts say it may be impossible to remove contaminated soil and dust from La Oroya Antigua. Residents’ opinions are polarized. The economy still revolves around the smelter, which employs about 3500 people directly. Many others work for companies that provide services to the plant or have relatives who work there. Members of local environmental groups say they have been threatened and accused of seeking to shut down the smelter. “I’ve often heard people say, ‘We’ve lived with lead for years, and our parents did, too, so what’s the problem?’” says Jose´ De Echave, director of the mining and communities program at CooperAccio´n, a nonprofit organization that focuses on mining-related environmental and social issues. “It creates an extremely conservative attitude. That is starting to change, but it’s a very slow process.” The goal, he says, must be to protect jobs but also to safeguard residents’ health.
Children at greatest risk The St. Louis University study confirmed earlier findings of high levels of lead in children’s blood. It also found cadmium, arsenic, mercury, antimony, cesium, and thallium, a mix Serrano called a “toxic cocktail”. A 2004 study by the American Heart Association found that lead and cadmium in the blood increased the risk of peripheral artery disease, even at levels generally considered “safe”. In children ages 7-12, blood cadmium levels were twice the U.S. average, and for adolescents ages 13-18 the levels were almost as high. Most disconcerting, Serrano says, were higher-than-expected lead and cadmium levels in children in a control group in a town about 50 miles away, which was chosen because there was no apparent point source nearby. Researchers were not surprised that 97% of children under age six in La Oroya had blood lead levels exceeding 10 µg/dL, but they did not expect to find those levels in 19% of the control group youngsters. They are unsure about the reason, though it could be that small children ingest these metals in household dust. Although the study used a threshold of 10 µg/dL, the level formerly accepted by the World Health Organization (WHO) for nonoccupational exposure, recent research indicates that there is no safe lead exposure level for children. In fact, the greatest cognitive decline in children occurs with increases at the lowest levels of exposure. Studies show that a child whose blood lead level increases from 2.5 to 5 µg/dL suffers a greater decline in reading ability than one 5556
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whose lead level increases from 5 to 10 µg/dL, according to Bruce Lanphear, who is a professor of children’s environmental health at Simon Fraser University (Canada) and an authority on lead exposure in children. “There’s not a linear relationship,” says Lanphear, who served as an expert witness from 2004 to 2006 in a leadexposure case involving a smelter owned by Doe Run’s U.S. sister company in Herculaneum, MO. Maribel Escando´n, 36, chatted with neighbors on the La Oroya street corner as her four-year-old daughter, bundled in a blanket on her back, watched over her shoulder. When she was pregnant, Escando´n’s blood lead level was more than five times WHO’s recommended limit for adults. High lead levels are linked to miscarriages, but Escando´n carried to term, passing the legacy on to her daughter, who had a level of 63 µg/dL when she was one year old. “At two years of age, kids with prenatal exposure and a blood lead level over 10 [have a] cognitive ability below that of others,” Lanphear says. Yolanda Medina, whose husband works at the smelter, says his supervisors have told him there is no danger from lead. “They’d like to believe that,” Lanphear says. “None of them want to believe that their livelihood is somehow causing damage to their kids. They either have to decide to leave or believe it.” The people most affected in La Oroya Antigua are the ones who cannot move or afford to send their children to stay with relatives in less-polluted neighborhoods, says Iva´n Lanegra, who heads the environmental oversight program at the governmental Ombudsman’s Office. “It’s a matter of inequality,” Lanegra says. An environmental health problem of that magnitude in an upper-class neighborhood of Lima “would be a scandal,” but in La Oroya “many people don’t have any choice [about staying in the town]. So it’s even more important for the government to act.” Oversight, however, is fragmented. A national government agency oversees compliance with environmental regulations, while a regional health office monitors health and air quality. In 2006, Peru’s Constitutional Court ordered the government to take steps to protect the health of La Oroya’s residents, and a year later the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued a similar ruling on behalf of 65 plaintiffs. In April, the Ombudsman’s Office sent a letter to Peru’s president and prime minister urging them to enforce the rulings.
Long-term health impact unknown According to health officials, blood lead levels have dropped in La Oroya Antigua, from an average of 35 µg/dL in 2005 to 21 µg/dL in 2007, although in 2008 the average for all children in the city was still more than twice the acceptable level for adults. Because no epidemiological studies have been done, no one knows the long-term impact of exposure to metals and SO2 on residents’ health or cognitive and motor development. Health officials monitor air quality and blood lead levels, and Doe Run sponsors campaigns to encourage hand washing and street cleaning. Parents are advised to boost children’s calcium and iron intake to decrease lead absorption, and the company funds a day-care center and nutrition program that takes children out of La Oroya Antigua for eight hours per day. The program, however, is limited to those under age six whose blood lead levels exceed 40 µg/dL, so fewer than 50 children benefit. When the subject of La Oroya’s air pollution comes up, officials at the Ministry of Energy and Mines often point out that the problem dates back nearly a century and that the
BARBARA FRASER
smelter would not have complied with the current air-quality standard for lead (0.5 µg/m3) even when it was run by Centromin. Thorough cleanup, they say, will take a long time. But while airborne lead in La Oroya Antigua was more than twice the current maximum allowable level in 1995 under state ownership, it spiked to 10 times the current standard when Doe Run purchased the complex in 1997 and increased production. The smelter, one of just a handful around the world that processes ore with high levels of impurities, buys ore from local mines and foreign sellers. Meanwhile, the clock is running out on Doe Run’s environmental plan. Guillermo Shinno, mining oversight manager of Osinergmin, the government agency responsible for enforcing environmental regulations, says the company is unlikely to meet the October 31 deadline for finishing the sulfuric acid plants. Once the deadline passes, he says, any failure to comply with air-quality standards will be fined. Jose´ Mogrovejo, Doe Run Peru’s manager of environmental affairs, says the company has asked the government to flex the deadline. “The process is more complex than was foreseen and has taken much longer than we expected,” he told reporters in late May. According to Vice Minister of Mines Felipe Isasi, the law that allowed Doe Run the first deadline extension leaves open the possibility that “October 31 might not be a firm date.” (Isasi resigned on June 4, 2009.) Germa´n Amado, who heads the regional government’s health program in La Oroya, says the region would oppose extending the deadline, although the decision would be in the hands of the national Ministry of Energy and Mines. Even if air-quality standards are met, Amado doubts that children’s blood lead will drop to safe levels as long as they live in La Oroya Antigua, where they can ingest and inhale metals in dust that has settled in and around their houses over the years. One step would be to move all schools out of La Oroya Antigua, so children are farther from the smelter during the day, but the only sure way of reducing children’s exposure is to move the residential area away from the smelter, he says. Following the lawsuit against Doe Run Peru’s sister company in Herculaneum, that company offered a buyout to families with children living near the smelter. But no such plan is on the table in Peru. Ministry of Energy and Mines officials claim La Oroya’s residents do not want to move, but some homeowners say they would go willingly if they received compensation for their property. Even supporters of relocation, however, say it would be a long, expensive, thorny process.
Laundry hangs out to dry in La Oroya Antigua, the neighborhood closest to the smelter, where children have dangerously high levels of lead in their blood. Meanwhile, the people living nearest the smelter are torn by the choice between jobs and health. Lanphear has seen similar conflicting attitudes toward lead exposure in other places, although he says La Oroya is an extreme case. And while progress has been made in reducing lead exposure during the past 40 years by phasing out lead-based paint and gasoline, cases like La Oroya are reminders that the problem still exists, especially in poor areas where residents cannot easily move their families to a cleaner neighborhood. “There’s a long history of this,” Lanphear says. “In the short term, we might say there’ve been tremendous victories, but in the longer scope of things, it seems to me a dismal failure of public health.” ES901734G
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